ot weary of listening to him, for his singing
was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and
modulations totally different from those we are accustomed to,
and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke
of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a
reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless divagation of
the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which
kept time with the swaying of the ship, the faint sound of the
dead water, and resembled a vague improvisation, restrained,
nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms.

When night had passed into day, the steep coasts of Majorca, dentelees
au soleil du matin par les aloes et les palmiers, came in sight, and
soon after El Mallorquin landed its passengers at Palma. Madame Sand had
left Paris a fortnight before in extremely cold weather, and here she
found in the first half of November summer heat. The newcomers
derived much pleasure from their rambles through the town, which has
a strongly-pronounced character of its own and is rich in fine and
interesting buildings, among which are most prominent the magnificent
Cathedral, the elegant Exchange (la lonja), the stately Town-Hall,
and the picturesque Royal Palace (palacio real). Indeed, in Majorca
everything is picturesque,

from the hut of the peasant, who in his most insignificant
buildings has preserved the tradition of the Arabic style, to
the infant clothed in rags and triumphant in his "malproprete
grandiose," as Heine said a propos of the market-women of
Verona. The character of the landscape, whose vegetation is
richer than that of Africa is in general, has quite as much
breadth, calm, and simplicity. It is green Switzerland under
the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the
East.

But picturesqueness alone does not make man's happiness, and Palma seems
to have afforded little else. If we may believe Madame Sand, there was
not a single hotel in the town, and the only accommodation her party
could get consisted of two small rooms, unfurnished rather than
furnished, in some wretched place where travellers are happy to find "a
folding-bed, a straw-bottomed chair, and, as regards food, pepper and
garlic a discretion." Still, however great their discomfort and disgust
might be, they had to do their utmost to hide their feelings; for, if
they had made faces on discovering vermin in their beds and scorpions in
their soup